Year in Review and a Word on Islamophobia

The new group of Fulbrighters arrived last week and with their coming, I marked my one-year anniversary in Morocco. It therefore seems an appropriate moment for self-reflection and evaluation, especially on my grant-related activities. In keeping with Fulbright’s dual objectives of cultural exchange and academic development, I’m dividing the list into two corresponding parts and also including a third one of goals for my remaining (less than!) three months. Finally, I want to throw all of the following activities into perspective by relaying some thoughts on the current controversy over the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan.

Cultural Exchange
(Given the open-ended nature of this part of my job description, consider the following a list of highlights)

- Learning Arabic, especially the Moroccan colloquial dialect: Not only is the acquisition of another language a sign of deep respect for the people who speak it, it also greatly facilitates communication. Plus, Moroccans love finding out that an American can speak a little bit of Arabic, especially their Arabic. We've discovered over the year a handful of "magic" words that guarantee the speaker an automatic "in" with any Moroccan. For example, madigadig(a) is a kind of obscure, exaggerated word for exhausted. Hop into a taxi cab, announce that you're madigadig(a), and trust me: that cab driver just became your best friend.

- Cooking lessons in Fez: Cath and I learned the art of making real couscous from our Moroccan friend, Layla.

- Mexican meals: In gratitude for the introduction to said proper couscous, I've had Moroccan friends over on several occasions for American food. Mexican actually. Hey, at least I'm being a cultural ambassador for someone.

- Joining a hiking group in Tetouan: This has been one of my most enjoyable and satisfying activities. It's put me in contact with a number of like-minded Moroccans, introduced me to the Rif Mountains and the park system (or lackthereof) in place here, and allowed me to share with my new friends a bit about the Cascades and outdoors culture in the States.

- French classes in Fez and Tetouan: It was really interesting to be in a classroom setting with groups of Moroccans, both male and female and ranging in age from late teens to late fifties. Truth be told, the dynamic wasn't all that different than what you'd find in the States. We had the eager middle-aged housewife always clamoring to answer questions; the excessively makeup-ed, high-heeled (and headscarved) girl flirting in the back with the young soccer player; the too-cool-for-school teenybopper; the blushing young man trying to ingratiate himself with the rest of "the guys," and so on. There was less male-female interaction than in an American classroom, but the atmosphere was never tense or awkward for that. As for me, I think everyone basically just wondered why the American girl's French accent was so horrendously awful. So perhaps I'm not breaking down any stereotypes on that front.

- Hanging out with Taymae: The ten year-old girl downstairs – and I say this with utmost humility – positively adores me. We get together once a week, to chat in English, play chess, look at pictures or cook.

- Generally being a friendly, well-behaved, respectful person: There are so many people that I've become pals with through my day-to-day errands, whether it's buying veggies or walnuts or newspapers, and hopefully all of them now carry with them a specific and positive connotation with the idea of "American." I know that their friendliness and respectful behavior helps me to look past stereotypes of Moroccans, or Arabs.

- Keeping this blog: Much as I enjoy it, I also consider these blog postings as part of my job! Fulbright puts a big emphasis on its grantees bringing their knowledge and experiences home to the States, and the "Chronicles" are one way I can do that even before the grant period is over.

Academic Work

- Lots and lots of background reading: The books and articles I'm drawing on are written by Spanish, Moroccans, Brits, Americans and French, and are published in Spanish, English and French (no Arabic yet! soon!). I take copious notes.

- Meeting with historians: The two highlights are the Spanish woman I described in a previous post and a young Moroccan professor at the university in Rabat. We met up a month ago for tea while he was home in Tetouan and chatted at length about the merits of oral narratives in writing history. His dissertation was on Moroccan soldiers in the Spanish Civil War, so he knows what he's talking about. I've also conversed with a number of other local experts on my topic.

- Meeting with the head of the Tetouani veterans' association and the head of the national assocation in Rabat: They were incredibly welcoming and helpful, excited about my research topic and willing to put me in touch with veterans wherever possible.

- Interviewing and becoming chums with a Moroccan veteran of the Spanish Civil War: I was introduced to him by way of the veterans' association. We've conducted a formal interview or two and made a trip to the Spanish city of Ceuta together to meet with the military officials in charge of veterans' affairs there, but these days Mohammed and I mostly just hang out. I get an avocado juice; he gets a Nescafe. We chill.

- Meeting with the Tetouani association demanding Spanish pensions for the widows and children of Moroccan soldiers who fought in the Spanish military: This group brought to my attention that events occurring in the 1930s still have a very real impact today. The rhetoric of some of the leaders can become incredibly overblown (comparing Spanish colonialism to the Holocaust), but it raises interesting questions about self-perception/portrayal and victimization in post-colonial countries.

- Meeting with the representative for veterans' affairs at the Tetouani Spanish consulate: A friendly Spanish man whose family has lived in Tetouan for three generations provided me with photocopies of the Francoist law still governing pensions for Moroccan veterans of the Spanish military.

- Fulbright spring symposium presentation and paper: All the Fulbrighters had to prepare a fifteen-page paper on their research and present it to the group, as well as to local academics and the American ambassador to Morocco. Because the event took place in April, I had only just begun the research part of my grant, but it was an excellent opportunity to synthesize the background knowledge I had accumulated up to that point.

- Making friends with the local librarian: Tetouan is home to the second largest public library in Morocco, in addition to extensive archival documentation. Unfortunately, the building was undergoing repairs when I arrived, but I did ingratiate myself with one of the librarians and am ready to go once the archives open up – hopefully next week!

- Lots and lots (and lots) of thinking: One of the most dismaying realizations I've had this year involved becoming aware that my research topic, which I thought was so specific and so great, was really not specific enough at all. And that furthermore, other people had published on it already, where I (naively and arrogantly) had believed myself to be treading on virgin scholarship. It was a long process of reconciliation and recovery and honing in on a more manageable subject, but an invaluable lesson as I seriously consider a career in academia.

- Arabic and French study: While there's certainly value in the experience I'm gaining by carrying out a first-time large-scale research project, the most concrete skills with which I can walk away from this time are linguistic. To that end, I've been continuing to study both Arabic and French during the research part of my grant. Trust me when I say that Arabic acquisition is more than sufficiently demanding as to be a full-time job.

Goals for the Home Stretch

- Get my hands on those archives! Open Sesame!

- Conduct a second (and perhaps third or fourth) round of meetings with all the people I listed above. I feel much more qualified to be talking with them now than I did several months back.

- Conduct meetings with new contacts I've made, including the director of a relevant documentary and the owner of a private archive collection

- Collect enough first-hand information that I can write up articles on this topic for general public consumption – one version in Spanish, speaking specifically to Spanish-Moroccan relations, and one in English, placing this historical moment in a more international context

- Contact local institutions and schools, like the American Language Institute and the Tangier-American School, and request the opportunity to give a guest lecture to the students on my research

- Put together a presentation for the Tetouani public on the general aspects of my topic. I originally envisioned this project to be a sort of museum exhibition with photographs and audio narratives, but because of logistics, I'm now thinking about a theatrical reading that would contrast the official rhetoric surrounding Spanish recruitment of Moroccan soldiers with the words of Moroccan soldiers themselves.

- Travel to other cities and places in the north, especially to see traces of the Spanish Protectorate and to meet people who have memories of it

- Continue with Arabic and French studies

Why Fulbright Matters

If the news has shown anything the past two weeks, it's that relations between Muslims and non-Muslim Americans have a long way to go before reaching mutual understanding and respect. We've seen everything from outright Islamophobia, in threats to burn the Qur'an and in the stabbing of a Muslim taxi driver in New York, to a quieter Islamophobia, in the negative response to the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan, known as Park51.

The misapprehension and fear characterizing the first two events are evident, and it should also be clear why Fulbright-esque cultural exchanges can help to combat such harmful feelings: I, the non-Muslim American, come to know that Muslims are not to be feared and hated, and the Muslims I meet in other countries find out that not all Americans want to burn the Qur'an. But what about the sentiments underlying the opposition to the Islamic community center? Is it fair of me to call them Islamophobic? How do I see this debate relating to my time in Morocco?

To begin with, yes, I do believe that we can – and should – view the response to the planned center as an instance of Islamophobia. The oft-expressed position that, "I'm not against Islam; I just don't think the proximity to Ground Zero is sensitive" simply doesn't hold up under examination. Any suggestion that the location of Park51 is insensitive clearly refers to its Islamic affiliation and indicates that at the very least the speaker is making an emotional association between something "Islamic" and the terrorist attacks on September 11, carried out in the name of Islam.

This sort of general identification of one "Islamic" with another is unfair and misguided. Most educated people know to make the distinction between moderate Muslims, who comprise the vast majority of the world's Muslim population, and the handful of extremists in whom the majority does not even recognize its religion – yet this recent controversy shows that even people who consider themselves informed and open-minded can still have some kind of gut wariness of the "Islamic."

We need to recognize this reaction for what it is, and we need to condemn it. Our judgment of the community center should be grounded in its particular merits or drawbacks; not in the connotation its name carries.

Furthermore, we should strive toward eliminating the wariness reaction altogether. How to do that? Again, cultural exchange and dialogue is key. The more I engage with individual Muslims, the less prone I am to lumping them all together into one big group.

I also see my academic work coming into play in this process. A crucial element that was missing from the Park51 debate was an understanding of the history of Islam in America, indeed of the intertwining of the Islamic and American narratives. Moroccan and American representatives love to toss around the fact that Morocco was the first country to officially recognize the United States as a sovereign nation. In response, the South Carolina legislature granted special legal status to a group of Moroccans residing in that colony in the Moors Sundry Act of 1790.

So Muslims have lived in the United States for as long as it has been a nation. They have been in New York City, on Manhattan island for decades. The imam at the center of the Park51 storm has headed a mosque in Lower Manhattan for 27 years; a Muslim prayer room existed in the World Trade Center. Muslims died in the September 11 attacks, both as building employees and as aid workers rushing to the rescue. They are serving in the American military in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no reason why, when a group of American Muslims wants to build a center for the good of its greater community, the idea should be received with anything less than enthusiasm.

My academic work here has to do with an opening up of the interconnected histories of Morocco and Spain, the latter of which suffers from its own problems of Islamophobia. In fact, Muslim-Spanish history makes an appearance in this current debate with regard to the significance of the name "Cordoba Initiative" (Cordoba being the capital of medieval Islamic Iberia, egregiously misreprented by Newt Gringich), but the broader takeaway of my overseas research is that any history of the "West" excluding mention of Muslim people is fundamentally wrong. I believe that reworking the traditional narratives to make them more accurate and inclusive will increase understanding of Muslim communities, as well as respect toward them.

Reflecting back on my year, then, it has certainly been productive and meaningful. Thank you to the people at Fulbright, the State Department and all y'all the American tax payers for supporting this incredible opportunity.